Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

While the NBA’s Conference finals are making surface-level headlines, tectonic plates are shifting underneath the NBA’s crust. On Tuesday, the NBA’s scuttlebutt radar detected signals that could alter the composition of the league. If a report from Portland 750 AM host and Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano are…Read more...

Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill didn’t realize the firestorm he sparked when he claimed it isn’t his job to mentor rookie third-round QB pick Malik Willis. His comments quickly went viral and, according to Tannehill, got spun and twisted a bit.Read more...

Remember when everyone clutched their pearls after Ricky Williams mimed smoking a joint on the sidelines of a Miami Dolphins game? It aged about as well as the “a college scholarship is more than enough compensation for student athletes” argument. Not only would America be richer had it taken Errick Miron’s…Read more...

This could finally be it. The NHL is starving for its next superstar. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby’s first-round exits with Washington and Pittsburgh left a void for a television-ratings hockey juggernaut.

A lot of sports fandom and analysis is about feel vs. facts, which can go pretty haywire at times. It definitely “feels” like these NBA playoffs have been uniquely blowout-heavy, but it kind of turns out they haven’t been. There just hasn’t been any game-turning shots in the last minute or buzzer-beaters that we…Read more...

The hype train for the 2022 NFL season hasn’t just left the station, it leapt off the tracks, burst into the stratosphere, and started singing a collection of Tupac’s greatest hits.Read more...

Logically, it makes zero sense to give Kyrie Irving a long-term contract.

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I’m exhausted trying to think of ways to drive home the severity of the allegations against Deshaun Watson. The depth of his indiscretions and sheer volume of his accusers is hard to put into words. It’s one of those things that you need to see visually to contextualize just how many massage therapists (22 in total)…Read more...

Well, if what you wanted from lawmakers in response to a senseless and sickening mass murder was a string of literal nonsense words, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that former Georgia running back Herschel Walker won his state’s Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat yesterday and then responded to the Uvalde…Read more...

While four years is a long time in soccer, and teams can greatly transform a couple times in that timespan, Real Madrid and Liverpool look a lot like they did four years ago. Liverpool are still anchored by Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Andrew Robertson in defense and Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah in…Read more...

Deebo Samuel might have 19 problemz, but his contract is the biggest one. In pursuit of a big-money extension or trade, Samuel is taking the troll route. Deebo was in Dallas for Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference finals, surely showing support for the Golden State Warriors, and was seen shaking hands with Cowboys QB…Read more...

Thoughts and prayers are the worst things you can offer during times like this. The Bible says that faith without works is dead, which means that all those prayers are useless without legislation. And those thoughts? Well, just because people hope — or think — we can get back to the world we lived in before Columbine…Read more...

For those who were sick of the Golden State Warriors and LeBron James winning all the time, you finally have what you wanted in the NBA: parity. Going into the playoffs there were at least six teams who had a legitimate shot at winning the championship. But one question: has it been fun?

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The going story out there has been that the NBA Playoffs have been kinda trash. It’s easy to see why people think that, because there’s been a ton of blowouts, and neither of the conference finals has produced a close game in eight tries. What we want out of the playoffs are moments and performances we can recall from…Read more...

Yesterday we finally got news that the NFL is considering eliminating the Pro Bowl!

The Los Angeles Lakers are currently searching for a new head coach. Once they settle on a candidate, this will be the Lakers’ sixth full-time head coach since 2012. That’s shocking for a franchise that has won as much as the Lakers have in their history. But this coaching search feels destined for failure.Read more...

Two hours before his Golden State Warriors took the court in Game 4 of the NBA’s Western Conference Finals, Steve Kerr refused to answer basketball questions. The only thing on the Warriors head coach’s mind was the lives lost in a senseless mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas hours prior, 355 miles from where Kerr sat in…Read more...

One of the saddest traditions in college sports is on hiatus as Nebraska football suspended its home game custom of releasing balloons after the first Husker score. For a long time, children could barely get to their seats before letting go of the plastic, red helium-filled orbs. Now, Big Red faithful can’t get rid of…Read more...

Charles Barkley: 11-time NBA All-Star, three-time gold medalist, and, uh, professional comedian? After a tweet this weekend about Barkley’s legendary sense of humor blew up, short, laugh-out-loud clips of the Inside the NBA analyst have started appearing in droves on Twitter. The original has over 3,000 quote tweets…Read more...

The Florida Panthers breezed through the first round of the playoffs and then got bounced from the second round so fast we barely had time for the annual discourse about the Presidents’ Trophy and whether it’s a curse for a team’s Stanley Cup hopes.Read more...

The Denver Nuggets are an NBA executive factory. Some of the best front-office talent in sports has come through that organization, and hopefully that’s because they have a development system like the San Antonio Spurs, because they continue to lose talent. On Monday the Minnesota Timberwolves hired Tim Connelly away…Read more...

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Acting like you’ve been there before might be cliché in the world of sports, but it really is the only way to operate for some franchises. For other organizations, it’s a few words some lame old guy threw together ages ago.

I’m used to things turning ugly when the St. Louis Blues are involved. It’s St. Louis, after all. The NHL must be praying that the Avalanche punt them into space in Game 5 so they can continue to pretty much ignore everything that’s gone on here. It’s what the league does best, considering that David Perron got all of…Read more...

Two teams who had top four picks in the 2022 NFL Draft and still have long histories of imbecilic incompetence are getting loads of love for their offseasons. If you listen to the way some media personalities present it, the Detroit Lions and New York Jets have a chance to not send their fans into a tailspin a month…Read more...

When I wrote the Dallas Mavericks were a mess earlier this season, it was right after they traded one terrible contract in Kristaps Porziņģis for two terrible contracts in Spencer Dwindiddle and Davis Bertans. My argument was not that the Mavs had made the wrong move in ditching the Latvian bum. Nor was it an…Read more...

This week, the NFL’s spring meetings are happening in the same city — Atlanta — in which the league tried to throw a sham of a “workout” for Colin Kaepernick just three years ago.

At the top, this isn’t some kudos party for how Nazem Kadri reacted to the racist threats he received from Blues fans after Game 3. This is just about his response on the ice, and we’ll get to some deadbrained hockey reaction to the more serious stuff in a second.Read more...

HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” covering the preseason and training camps, can step aside as HBO’s premier network docuseries. “Hard Knocks In Season” is where the true drama lies. In training camp, everyone is upbeat and pollyannaish. Emotions are more volatile during the season when expectations ram into reality, and reality…Read more...

The Dallas Mavericks theme song should be Drake’s “In My Feelings” for the remainder of the playoffs. That is, because head coach Jason Kidd is all in his feelings over the team being (repeatedly) fined for bench violations. Kidd’s team has been hit three times by league authorities during this postseason, with each…Read more...

The fallout from Sasha Banks and Naomi walking out of WWE Raw continued over the weekend. With this drip-fed style of news, the overall feeling is still that there’s something much bigger floating beneath the surface and has been there a while, and it may be some time, if ever, that we get to the real meat of the…Read more...

They’re talking about it. I guess that’s the best we can expect from the apex predator capitalist group known as the NFL team owners.Read more...

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“You know… I don’t know, to be honest.”Read more...

On the cusp of returning to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2019, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors find themselves in prime position to silence critics. With a 3-0 lead, the Warriors are all but guaranteed to have a spot saved for them on June 2 when the Finals begin. Winning a fourth championship…Read more...

The Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud is a microcosm of the two schools of thought in college football right now. Texas A&M beat Alabama for the top recruiting class in the nation this year and one coach, Saban, was none too pleased, saying, “A&M bought every player on their team.”

Let’s be fair, it isn’t much of a sacrifice or even a hard choice to make more money than a lot of countries’ GDP and live in Paris. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and something 95 percent of the world would opt for (with the other five percent either already living there, making millions somewhere better, or…Read more...

Entering this series, Luka Dončić’s heft, weight and skill were expected to overwhelm Andrew Wiggins. Instead, Wiggins’ capstone moment in his jewel of a playoff series came during Golden State’s 109-100 victory at the expense of the 23-year-old Dončić.

The narrative, the easiest one to reach for which is generally what most hockey observers want to do before hitting the bar, is the two-time defending champ Tampa Bay Lightning must be playing great defense because the Florida Panthers have scored just three goals in three games. And while that’s not wildly off the…Read more...

It’s nice to have the Dallas Mavericks in the postseason for an extended period of time. They have a good crowd and one of the best young players in the league. But regardless of whether it’s Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley, or Luka Dončić leading the team on the floor, since the turn of the millennium the constant…Read more...

If there are any Mavericks/Liverpool fans out there, our heart goes out to you (though the Mavs have been nearly untouchable at home, so there may still be some salvation for them). Both of those teams were or are being asked to stand in front of a bus with no brakes and tasked with getting it to stop. There simply is…Read more...

Robert Williams III is going to feel pressure — much of it from himself — to get back on the court for Game 4 against the Miami Heat. The Boston Celtics lost at home on Saturday and surely do not want to go down 3-1 heading back to Miami. Kyle Lowry returned to the floor for the Heat in Game 3 and he played better…Read more...

The Miami Heat resemble a team that won on the scorecard instead of the scoreboard. In the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals cage match, the Celtics have a few lumps on their skulls.Read more...

In the age of social media, there are some things you just shouldn’t say aloud (or in writing), and certain celebrities and athletes you want to steer clear of when it comes to particular commentary. Golden State Warriors beat reporter Mark Haynes found this out the hard way Saturday night, after answering a question…Read more...

Our media apparatus remains completely unprepared to deal with the challenges it faces, out of fear that calling things what they are — telling the truth — will be too controversial and cause a backlash.Read more...

WWE just made things worse with Sasha Banks and Naomi. Much worse. What were the options considered by Vince McMahon and discarded? I can’t think of how Friday’s actions on Smackdown! make things any more amicable after two of the company’s standout performers walked out, due to bad creative plans, earlier this week.

Cue the “old man yells at cloud” Simpsons headline — Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant, who turned 95 yesterday, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he thinks the “boring” parts of football, including fair catches, kneels to end the game, and touchbacks, should be removed from the game. Now, to you and I, those things…Read more...

The road to the College Football Playoff got more direct Wednesday with an announcement from the NCAA that conferences with at least 12 members were no longer required to decide their football champions by splitting its league into two divisions and the winners compete in a conference championship game.